Those who have attended to this practice of our literary tribunal are well
aware, that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster
Hall, we are frequently enabled to take cognizance of cases lying beyond the
sphere of our original jurisdiction. We need hardly say, therefore, that, in the
present instance, M. Perier is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be
mentioned in any subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is
used for the sole purpose of bringing Machiavelli into court.

We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as that
of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The
terms in which he is commonly described would seem to impart that he was
the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the
original inventor of perjury, and that, before the publication of his fatal
"Prince," there had never been a hypocrite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated
virtue, or a convenient crime. One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of
Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy from that execrable volume. Another
remarks, that, since it was translated into Turkish, the sultans have been more
addicted than formerly to the custom of strangling their brothers. Lord
Lyttelton charges the poor Florentine with the manifold treasons of the house
of Guise, and with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Several authors have
hinted that the Gunpowder Plot is to be primarily attributed to his doctrines,
and seem to think that his effigy ought to be substituted for that of Guy
Fawkes, in those processions by which the ingenuous youth of England
annually commemorate the preservation of the Three Estates. The Church of
Rome has pronounced in works accursed things. Nor have our own
countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his
surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian
name a synonym for the Devil.

It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not well acquainted with the
history and literature of Italy, to read without horror and amazement the
celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of
Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, naked yet not ashamed, such
cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to
the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would
scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of
some palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the
slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political
science.

It is not strange that ordinary readers should regard the author of such a book
as the most depraved and shameless of human beings. Wise men, however,
have always been inclined to look with great suspicion on the angels and
demons of the multitude; and, in the present instance, several circumstances
have led even superficial observers to question the justice of the vulgar
decision. It is notorious that Machiavelli was, through life, a zealous
republican. In the same year in which he composed his manual of "Kingcraft,"
he suffered imprisonment and torture in the cause of public liberty. It seems
inconceivable that the martyr of freedom should have designedly acted as the
apostle of tyranny. Several eminent writers have, therefore, endeavored to
detect in this unfortunate performance some concealed meaning, more
consistent with the character and conduct of the author than that which
appears at the first glance.

One hypothesis is, that Machiavelli intended to practice on the young Lorenzo
de' Medici a fraud similar to that which Sunderland is said to have employed
against our James II, and that he urged his pupil to violent and perfidious
measures, as the surest means of accelerating the moment of deliverance and
revenge. Another supposition, which Lord Bacon seems to countenance, is
that the treatise was merely a piece of grave irony, intended to warn nations
against the arts of ambitious men. It would be easy to show that neither of
these solutions is consistent with many passages in "The Prince" itself. But the
most decisive refutation is that which is furnished by the other works of
Machiavelli. In all the writings which he gave to the public, and in all those
which the research of editors has, in the course of three centuries, discovered;
in his comedies, designed for the entertainment of the multitude; in his
"Comments on Livy," intended for the perusal of the most enthusiastic patriots
of Florence; in his history, inscribed to one of the most amiable and estimable
of the popes; in his public despatches; in his private memoranda - the same
obliquity of moral principle for which "The Prince" is so severely censured is
more or less discernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to find, in all
the many volumes of his compositions, a single expression indicating that
dissimulation and treachery had ever struck him as discreditable.

After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are acquainted with few
writings which exhibit so much elevation of sentiment, so pure and warm a
zeal for the public good, or so just a view of the duties and rights of citizens,
as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from "The Prince" itself we
could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age
and country, this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole
man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities,
selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity,
abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran
diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most
confidential spy: the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed by
an ardent school-boy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous perfidy
and an act of patriotic self-devotion call forth the same kind and the same
degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer seems at
once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two characters altogether
dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They
are the warp and the woof of his mind; and their combination, like that of the
variegated threads in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glancing and
ever-changing appearance. The explanation might have been easy if he had
been a very weak or a very affected man. But he was evidently neither the
one nor the other. His works prove, beyond all contradiction, that his
understanding was strong, his taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous
exquisitely keen.

This is strange, and yet the strangest is behind. There is no reason whatever to
think that those amongst whom he lived saw anything shocking or incongruous
in his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the high estimation in which both his
works and his person were held by the most respectable among his
contemporaries. Clement VII patronized the publication of those very books
which the Council of Trent, in the following generation, pronounced unfit for
the perusal of Christians. Some members of the democratical party censured
the secretary for dedicating "The Prince" to a patron who bore the unpopular
name of Medici. But, to those immoral doctrines which have since called forth
such severe reprehensions no exception appears to have been taken. The cry
against them was first raised beyond the Alps, and seems to have been heard
with amazement in Italy. The earliest assailant, as far as we are aware, was a
countryman of our own, Cardinal Pole. The author of the "Anti-Machiavelli"
was a French Protestant.

It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those times
that we must seek for the real explanation of what seems most mysterious in
the life and writings of this remarkable man. As this is a subject which
suggests many interesting considerations, both political and metaphysical, we
shall make no apology for discussing it at some length.

During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the downfall of the
Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far greater degree than any other
part of western Europe, the traces of ancient civilization. The night which
descended upon her was the night of an Arctic summer. The dawn began to
reappear before the last reflection of the preceding sunset had faded from the
horizon. It was in the time of the French Merovingians and of the Saxon
Heptarchy that ignorance and ferocity seemed to have done their worst. Yet
even then the Neapolitan provinces, recognizing the authority of the Eastern
Empire, preserved something of Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome,
protected by the sacred character of her pontiffs, enjoyed at least
comparative security and repose. Even in those regions where the sanguinary
Lombards had fixed their monarchy, there was incomparably more of wealth,
of information, of physical comfort, and of social order, than could be found in
Gaul, Britain, or Germany.

That which most distinguished Italy from the neighboring countries was the
importance which the population of the towns, at a very early period, began
to acquire. Some cities had been founded in wild and remote situations, by
fugitives who had escaped from the rage of the barbarians. Such were Venice
and Genoa, which preserved their freedom by their obscurity, till they became
able to preserve it by their power. Other cities seem to have retained, under
all the changing dynasties of invaders, under Odoacer and Theodoric, Narses
and Alboin, the municipal institutions which had been conferred on them by
the liberal policy of the Great Republic. In provinces which the central
government was too feeble either to protect or to oppress, these institutions
gradually acquired stability and vigor. The citizens, defended by their walls,
and governed by their own magistrates and their own by-laws, enjoyed a
considerable share of republican independence. Thus a strong democratic
spirit was called into action. The Carlovingian sovereigns were too imbecile to
subdue it. The generous policy of Otho encouraged it. It might perhaps have
been suppressed by a close coalition between the Church and the empire. It
was fostered and invigorated by their disputes. In the twelfth century it
attained its full vigor, and, after a long and doubtful conflict, triumphed over
the abilities and courage of the Swabian princes.

The assistance of the ecclesiastical power had greatly contributed to the
success of the Guelfs. That success would, however, have been a doubtful
good, if its only effect had been to substitute a moral for a political servitude,
and to exalt the popes at the expense of the Caesars. Happily the public mind
of Italy had long contained the seeds of free opinions, which were now rapidly
developed by the genial influence of free institutions. The people of that
country had observed the whole machinery of the Church, its saints and its
miracles, its lofty pretensions, and its splendid ceremonial, its worthless
blessings and its harmless curses, too long and too closely to be duped. They
stood behind the scenes on which others were gazing with childish awe and
interest. They witnessed the arrangement of the pulleys, and the manufacture
of the thunders. They saw the natural faces, and heard the natural voices, of
the actors. Distant nations looked on the Pope as the vicegerent of the
Almighty, the oracle of the All-Wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the
disputes either of theologians or of kings, no Christian ought to appeal. The
Italians were acquainted with all the follies of his youth, and with all the
dishonest arts by which he had attained power. They knew how often he had
employed the keys of the Church to release himself from the most sacred
engagements, and its wealth to pamper his mistresses and nephews. The
doctrines and rites of the established religion they treated with decent
reverence. But, though they still called themselves Catholics, they had ceased
to be papists. Those spiritual arms which carried terror into the palaces and
camps of the proudest sovereigns excited only contempt in the immediate
neighborhood of the Vatican. Alexander, when he commanded our Henry II
to submit to the lash before the tomb of a rebellious subject, was himself an
exile. The Romans, apprehending that he entertained designs against their
liberties, had driven him from their city; and, though he solemnly promised to
confine himself for the future to his spiritual functions, they still refused to
readmit him.

In every other part of Europe, a large and powerful privileged class trampled
on the people, and defied the government. But, in the most flourishing parts of
Italy, the feudal nobles were reduced to comparative insignificance. In some
districts they took shelter under the protection of the powerful
commonwealths which they were unable to oppose, and gradually sank into
the mass of burghers. In other places, they possessed great influence; but it
was an influence widely different from that which was exercised by the
aristocracy of any trans-Alpine kingdom. They were not petty princes, but
eminent citizens. Instead of strengthening their fastnesses among the
mountains, they embellished their palaces in the market-place. The state of
society in the Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of the ecclesiastical
State, more nearly resembled that which existed in the great monarchies of
Europe. But the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, through all their
revolutions, preserved a different character. A people, when assembled in a
town, is far more formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over a wide
extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Caesars found it necessary to
feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the expense of the
provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than once besieged their
sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most humiliating
concessions. The sultans have often been compelled to propitiate the furious
rabble of Constantinople with the head of an unpopular vizier. From the same
cause, there was a certain tinge of democracy in the monarchies and
aristocracies of northern Italy.

Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, revisited Italy; and with liberty
came commerce and empire, science and taste, all the comforts and all the
ornaments of life. The Crusades, from which the inhabitants of other countries
gained nothing but relics and wounds, brought to the rising commonwealths of
the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas a large increase of wealth, dominion, and
knowledge. The moral and the geographical position of those commonwealths
enabled them to profit alike by the barbarism of the West and by the
civilization of the East. Italian ships covered every sea. Italian factories rose
on every shore. The tables of Italian money-changers were set in every city.
Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. The operations of the
commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful inventions.
We doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, has at the
present time reached so high a point of wealth and civilization as some parts
of Italy had attained four hundred years ago. Historians rarely descend to those details
from which alone the real estate of a community can be collected. Hence
posterity is too often deceived by the vague hyperboles of poets and
rhetoricians, who mistake the splendor of a court for the happiness of a
people. Fortunately, John Villani has given us an example and precise account
of the state of Florence in the early part of the fourteenth century. The revenue
of the republic amounted to three hundred thousand florins, a sum which,
allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals, was at least
equivalent to pounds six hundred thousand pounds sterling - a larger
sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded annually to
Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two hundred factories
and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually produced sold, at an
average, for twelve hundred thousand florins - a sum fully equal, in
exchangeable value, to pounds two millions and a half of our money. Four
hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted
the commercial operations, not of Florence only, but of all Europe.
The transactions of these establishments were sometimes of a magnitude
which may surprise even the contemporaries of the Barings and the
Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward III of England upwards
of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the mark contained more
silver than fifty shillings of the present day, and when the value of
silver was more than quadruple of what it now is. The city, and its
environs contained a hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants. In the
various schools about ten thousand children were taught to read, twelve
hundred studied arithmetic, six hundred received a learned education.

The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to that
of the public prosperity. Under the despotic successors of Augustus all the
fields of the intellect had been turned into arid wastes, still marked out by
formal boundaries, still retaining the traces of old cultivation, but yielding
neither flowers nor fruit. The deluge of barbarism came. It swept away all the
landmarks. It obliterated all the signs of former tillage. But, it fertilized while it
devastated. When it receded, the wilderness was as the garden of God,
rejoicing on every side, laughing, clapping its hands, pouring forth, in
spontaneous abundance, everything brilliant or fragrant or nourishing. A new
language, characterized by simple sweetness and simple energy, had attained
perfection. No tongue ever furnished more gorgeous and vivid tints to poetry;
nor was it long before a poet appeared who knew how to employ them. Early
in the fourteenth century came forth "The Divine Comedy," beyond
comparison the greatest work of imagination which had appeared since the
poems of Homer. The following generation produced indeed no second
Dante, but it was eminently distinguished by general intellectual activity. The
study of the Latin writers had never been wholly neglected in Italy. But
Petrarch introduced a more profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship, had
communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the literature, the history,
and the antiquities of Rome, which divided his own heart with a frigid mistress
and a more frigid muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime
and graceful models of Greece.

From this time, the admiration of learning and genius became almost an
idolatry among the people of Italy. Kings and republics, cardinals and doges,
vied with each other in honoring and flattering Petrarch. Embassies from rival
States solicited the honor of his instructions. His coronation agitated the Court
of Naples and the people of Rome as much as the most important political
transaction could have done. To collect books and antiques, to found
professorships, to patronize men of learning, became almost universal fashions
among the great. The spirit of literary research allied itself to that of
commercial enterprise. Every place to which the merchant princes of Florence
extended their gigantic traffic, from the bazars of the Tigris to the monasteries
of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts. Architecture,
painting, and sculpture were munificently encouraged. Indeed, it would be
difficult to name an Italian of eminence, during the period of which we speak,
who, whatever may have been his general character, did not at least affect a
love of letters and of the arts.

A time was at hand when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to be
poured forth and shaken out over those pleasant countries - a time of
slaughter, famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, despair.

Part II

In the Italian States, as in many natural bodies, untimely decrepitude was the
penalty of precocious maturity. Their early greatness, and their early decline,
are principally to be attributed to the same cause - the preponderance which
the towns acquired in the political system.

In a community of hunters or of shepherds every man easily and necessarily
becomes a soldier. His ordinary avocations are perfectly compatible with all
the duties of military service. However remote may be the expedition on
which he is bound, he finds it easy to transport with him the stock from which
he derives his subsistence. The whole people in an army, the whole year a
march. Such was the state of society which facilitated the gigantic conquests
of Attila and Tamerlane.

But a people which subsists by the cultivation of the earth is in a very different
situation. The husbandman is bound to the soil on which he labors. A long
campaign would be ruinous to him. Still his pursuits are such as to give his
frame both the active and the passive strength necessary to a soldier. Nor do
they, at least in the infancy of agricultural science, demand his uninterrupted
attention. At particular times of the year he is almost wholly unemployed, and
can, without injury to himself, afford the time necessary for a short expedition.
Thus the legions of Rome were supplied during its earlier wars. The season
during which the fields did not require the presence of the cultivators sufficed
for a short inroad and a battle. These operations, too frequently interrupted to
produce decisive results, yet served to keep up among the people a degree of
discipline and courage which rendered them not only secure but formidable.
The archers and billmen of the Middle Ages, who, with provisions for forty
days at their back, left the fields for the camp, were troops of the same
description.

But when commerce and manufactures begin to flourish, a great change takes
place. The sedentary habits of the desk and the loom render the exertions and
hardships of war insupportable. The business of traders and artisans requires
their constant presence and attention. In such a community there is little
superfluous time; but there is generally much superfluous money. Some
members of the society are, therefore, hired to relieve the rest from a task
inconsistent with their habits and engagements.

The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other respects, the best
commentary on the history of Italy. Five hundred years before the Christian
era the citizens of the republics round the Aegean Sea formed perhaps the
finest militia that ever existed. As wealth and refinement advanced, the system
underwent a gradual alteration. The Ionian States were the first in which
commerce and the arts were cultivated, and the first in which the ancient
discipline decayed. Within eighty years after the battle of Plataea, mercenary
troops were everywhere plying for battles and sieges. In the time of
Demosthenes, it was scarcely possible to persuade or compel the Athenians
to enlist for foreign service. The laws of Lycurgus prohibited trade and
manufactures. The Spartans, therefore, continued to form a national force long
after their neighbors had begun to hire soldiers. But their military spirit
declined with their singular institutions. In the second century before Christ,
Greece contained only one nation of warriors, the savage highlanders of
Aetolia, who were some generations behind their countrymen in civilization
and intelligence.

All the causes which produced these effects among the Greeks acted still
more strongly on the modern Italians. Instead of a power like Sparta, in its
nature warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state, in its nature
pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, every freeman is induced by the
strongest motives to familiarize himself with the use of arms. The
commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, swarm with thousands
of these household enemies. Lastly, the mode in which military operations
were conducted during the prosperous times of Italy was peculiarly
unfavorable to the formation of an efficient militia. Men covered with iron from
head to foot, armed with ponderous lances, and mounted on horses of the
largest breed, were considered as composing the strength of an army. The
infantry was regarded as comparatively worthless, and was neglected till it
became really so. These tactics maintained their ground for centuries in most
parts of Europe. That foot-soldiers could withstand the charge of heavy
cavalry was thought utterly impossible, till, towards the close of the fifteenth
century, the rude mountaineers of Switzerland dissolved the spell, and
astounded the most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded shock on
an impenetrable forest of pikes.

The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman sword, or the modern bayonet,
might be acquired with comparative ease. But nothing short of the daily
exercise of years could train the man at arms to support his ponderous
panoply, and manage his unwieldy weapon. Throughout Europe this most
important branch of war became a separate profession. Beyond the Alps,
indeed, though a profession, it was not generally a trade. It was the duty and
the amusement of a large class of country gentlemen. It was the service by
which they held their lands, and the diversion by which, in the absence of
mental resources, they beguiled their leisure. But in the northern States of
Italy, as we have already remarked, the growing power of the cities, where it
had not exterminated this order of men, had completely changed their habits.
Here, therefore, the practice of employing mercenaries became universal, at a
time when it was almost unknown in other countries.

When war becomes the trade of a separate class the least dangerous course
left to a government is to form that class into a standing army. It is scarcely
possible that men can pass their lives in the service of one State, without
feeling some interest in its greatness. Its victories are their victories. Its defeats
are their defeats. The contract loses something of its mercantile character. The
services of the soldier are considered as the effects of patriotic zeal, his pay as
the tribute of national gratitude. To betray the power which employs him, to
be even remiss in its service, are in his eyes the most atrocious and degrading
of crimes.

When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired troops,
their wisest course would have been to form separate military establishments.
Unhappily this was not done. The mercenary warriors of the Peninsula,
instead of being attached to the service of different powers, were regarded as
the common property of all. The connection between the State and its
defenders was reduced to the most simple and naked traffic. The adventurer
brought his horse, his weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the
market. Whether the King of Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope or the
Signory of Florence, struck the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect
indifference. He was for the highest wages and the longest term. When the
campaign for which he had contracted was finished, there was neither law nor
punctilio to prevent him from instantly turning his arms against his late masters.
The soldier was altogether disjoined from the citizen and from the subject.

The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who neither
loved those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who
were often bound by stronger ties to the army against which they fought than
to the State which they served, who lost by the termination of the conflict, and
gained by its prolongation, war completely changed its character. Every man
came into the field of battle impressed with the knowledge, that, in a few
days, he might be taking the pay of the power against which he was then
employed, and fighting by the side of his enemies against his associates. The
strongest interests and the strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the hostility
of those who had lately been brethren in arms, and who might soon be
brethren in arms once more. Their common profession was a bond of union
not to be forgotten, even when they were engaged in the service of contending
parties. Hence it was that operations, languid and indecisive beyond any
recorded in history, marches and countermarches, pillaging expeditions and
blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally bloodless combats, make up
the military history of Italy during the course of nearly two centuries. Might
armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A great victory is won. Thousands of
prisoners are taken, and hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to have
been really less dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult.

Courage was now no longer necessary, even to the military character. Men
grew old in camps, and acquired the highest renown by their warlike
achievements, without being once required to face serious danger. The
political consequences are too well known. The richest and most enlightened
part of the world was left undefended to the assaults of every barbarous
invader, to the brutality of Switzerland, the insolence of France, and the fierce
rapacity of Aragon. The moral effects which followed from this state of things
were still more remarkable.

Amongst the rude nations which lay beyond the Alps, valor was absolutely
indispensable. Without it none could be eminent, few could be secure.
Cowardice was, therefore, naturally considered as the foulest reproach.
Among the polished Italians, enriched by commerce, governed by law, and
passionately attached to literature, everything was done by superiority of
intelligence. Their very wars, more pacific than the peace of their neighbors,
required rather civil than military qualifications. Hence, while courage was the
point of honor in other countries, ingenuity became the point of honor in Italy.

From these principles were deduced, by processes strictly analogous, two
opposite systems of fashionable morality. Through the greater part of Europe,
the vices which peculiarly belong to timid dispositions, and which are the
natural defence of weakness, fraud, and hypocrisy, have always been most
disreputable. On the other hand, the excesses of haughty and daring spirits
have been treated with indulgence, and even with respect. The Italians
regarded with corresponding lenity those crimes which require self-command,
address, quick observation, fertile invention, and profound knowledge of
human nature.

Such a prince as our Henry V would have been the idol of the North. The
follies of his youth, the selfish ambition of his manhood, the Lollards roasted at
slow fires, the prisoners massacred on the field of battle, the expiring lease of
priestcraft renewed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a causeless and
hopeless war bequeathed to a people who had no interest in its event -
everything is forgotten but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the
other hand, was the model of Italian heroes. He made his employers and his
rivals alike his tools. He first overpowered his open enemies by the help of
faithless allies: he then armed himself against his allies with the spoils taken
from his enemies. By his incomparable dexterity, he raised himself from the
precarious and dependent situation of a military adventurer to the first throne
of Italy. To such a man much was forgiven hollow friendship, ungenerous
enmity, violated faith. Such are the opposite errors which men commit, when
their morality is not a science, but a taste, when they abandon eternal
principles for accidental associations.

We have illustrated our meaning by an instance taken from history. We will
select another from fiction. Othello murders his wife; he gives orders for the
murder of his lieutenant; he ends by murdering himself. Yet he never loses the
esteem and affection of Northern readers. His intrepid and ardent spirit
redeems everything. The unsuspecting confidence with which he listens to his
adviser, the agony with which he shrinks from the thought of shame, the
tempest of passion with which he commits his crimes, and the haughty
fearlessness with which he avows them, give an extraordinary interest to his
character. Iago, on the contrary, is the object of universal loathing. Many are
inclined to suspect that Shakespeare has been seduced into an exaggeration
unusual with him, and has drawn a monster who has no archetype in human
nature. Now, we suspect that an Italian audience in the fifteenth century would
have felt very differently. Othello would have inspired nothing but detestation
and contempt. The folly with which he trusts the friendly professions of a man
whose promotion he had obstructed, the credulity with which he takes
unsupported assertions, and trivial circumstances, for unanswerable proofs,
the violence with which he silences the exculpation till the exculpation can only
aggravate his misery, would have excited the abhorrence and disgust of his
spectators. The conduct of Iago they would assuredly have condemned, but
they would have condemned it as we condemn that of his victim. Something
of interest and respect would have mingled with their disapprobation. The
readiness of the traitor's wit, the clearness of his judgment, the skill with which
he penetrates the dispositions of others, and conceals his own, would have
insured to him a certain portion of their esteem.

So wide was the difference between the Italians and their neighbors. A similar
difference existed between the Greeks of the second century before Christ,
and their masters, the Romans. The conquerors, brave and resolute, faithful to
their engagements, and strongly influenced by religious feelings, were, at the
same time, ignorant, arbitrary, and cruel. With the vanquished people were
deposited all the art, the science, and the literature of the Western world. In
poetry, in philosophy, in painting, in architecture, in sculpture, they had no
rivals. Their manners were polished, their perceptions acute, their invention
ready; they were tolerant, affable, humane; but of courage and sincerity they
were almost utterly destitute. Every rude centurion consoled himself for his
intellectual inferiority, by remarking that knowledge and taste seemed only to
make men atheists, cowards and slaves. The distinction long continued to be
strongly marked, and furnished and admirable subject for the fierce sarcasms
of Juvenal.

The citizen of an Italian commonwealth was the Greek of the time of Juvenal
and the Greek of the time of Pericles, joined in one. Like the former, he was
timid and pliable, artful and mean. But, like the latter, he had a country. Its
independence and prosperity were dear to him. If his character were
degraded by some base crimes, it was, on the other hand, ennobled by public
spirit and by an honorable ambition.

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates
in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious
effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady, the latter a
constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he, too, often
flings the remains of his virtue after it in despair. The Highland gentleman,
who, a century ago, lived by taking blackmail from his neighbors, committed
the same crime for which Wild was accompanied to Tyburn by the huzzas of
two hundred thousand people. But there can be no doubt that he was a much less depraved
man than Wild. The deed for which Mrs. Brownrigg was hanged, sinks into
nothing when compared with the conduct of the Roman who treated the
public to one hundred pairs of gladiators. Yet we should greatly wrong such a
Roman if we supposed that his disposition was as cruel as that of Mrs.
Brownrigg. In our own country, a woman forfeits her place in society by
what, in a man, is too commonly considered as an honorable distinction, and
at worst as a venial error. The consequence is notorious. The moral principle
of a woman is frequently more impaired by a single lapse from virtue than that
of a man by twenty years of intrigues. Classical antiquity would furnish us with
instances stronger, if possible, than those to which we have referred.

We must apply this principle to the case before us. Habits of dissimulation and
falsehood, no doubt, mark a man of our age and country as utterly worthless
and abandoned. But it by no means follows that a similar judgment would be
just in the case of an Italian in the Middle Ages. On the contrary, we
frequently find those faults which we are accustomed to consider as certain
indications of a mind altogether depraved, in company with great and good
qualities, with generosity, with benevolence, with disinterestedness. From such
a state of society, Palamedes, in the admirable dialogue of Hume, might have
drawn illustrations of his theory as striking as any of those with which Fourli
furnished him. These are not, we well know, the lessons which historians are
generally most careful to teach, or readers most willing to learn. But they are
not therefore useless. How Philip disposed his troops at Chaeronea, where
Hannibal crossed the Alps, whether Mary blew up Darnley, or Siquier shot
Charles XII, and the thousand other questions of the same description, are in
themselves unimportant. The inquiry may amuse us, but the decision leaves us
no wiser. He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully
circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass
into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental
and transitory in human nature, from what is essential and immutable.

In this respect, no history suggests more important reflections than that of the
Tuscan and Lombard commonwealths. The character of the Italian statesman
seems, at first sight, a collection of contradictions, a phantom as monstrous as
the portress of hell in Milton, half divinity, half snake, majestic and beautiful
above, grovelling and poisonous below. We see a man whose thoughts and
words have no connection with each other, who never hesitates at an oath
when he wishes to seduce, who never wants a pretext when he is inclined to
betray. His cruelties spring, not from the heat of blood, or the insanity of
uncontrolled power, but from deep and cool meditation. His passions, like
well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their most headstrong fury
never forget the discipline to which they have been accustomed. His whole
soul is occupied with vast and complicated schemes of ambition, yet his
aspect and language exhibit nothing but philosophical moderation. Hatred and
revenge eat into his heart; yet every look is a cordial smile, every gesture a
familiar caress. He never excites the suspicion of his adversaries by petty
provocations. His purpose is disclosed, only when it is accomplished. His face
is unruffled, his speech is courteous, till vigilance is laid asleep, till a vital point
is exposed, till a sure aim is taken; and then he strikes for the first and last
time. Military courage, the boast of the sottish German, of the frivolous and
prating Frenchman, of the romantic and arrogant Spaniard, he neither
possesses nor values. He shuns danger, not because he is insensible to shame,
but because, in the society in which he lives, timidity has ceased to be
shameful. To do an injury openly is, in his estimation, as wicked as to do it
secretly, and far less profitable. With him the most honorable means are those
which are the surest, the speediest, and the darkest. He cannot comprehend
how a man should scruple to deceive those whom he does not scruple to
destroy. He would think it madness to declare open hostilities against rivals
whom he might stab in a friendly embrace, or poison in a consecrated wafer.

Yet this man, black with the vices which we consider as most loathsome,
traitor, hypocrite, coward, assassin, was by no means destitute even of those
virtues which we generally consider as indicating superior elevation of
character. In civil courage, in perseverance, in presence of mind, those
barbarous warriors, who were foremost in the battle or the breach, were far
his inferiors. Even the dangers which he avoided with a caution almost
pusillanimous never confused his perceptions, never paralyzed his inventive
faculties, never wrung out one secret from his smooth tongue and his
inscrutable brow. Though a dangerous enemy, and a still more dangerous
accomplice, he could be a just and beneficent ruler. With so much unfairness
in his policy, there was an extraordinary degree of fairness in his intellect.
Indifferent to truth in the transactions of life, he was honestly devoted to truth
in the researches of speculation. Wanton cruelty was not in his nature. On the
contrary, where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and
humane. The susceptibility of his nerves and the activity of his imagination
inclined him to sympathize with the feelings of others, and to delight in the
charities and courtesies of social life. Perpetually descending to actions which
might seem to mark a mind diseased through all its faculties, he had
nevertheless an exquisite sensibility, both for the natural and the moral
sublime, for every graceful and every lofty conception. Habits of petty intrigue
and dissimulation might have rendered him incapable of great general views,
but that the expanding effect of his philosophical studies counteracted the
narrowing tendency. He had the keenest enjoyment of wit, eloquence, and
poetry. The fine arts profited alike by the severity of his judgment, and by the
liberality of his patronage. The portraits of some of the remarkable Italians of
those times are perfectly in harmony with this description. Ample and majestic
foreheads; brows strong and dark, but not frowning; eyes of which the calm,
full gaze, while it expresses nothing, seems to discern everything; cheeks pale
with thought and sedentary habits; lips formed with feminine delicacy, but
compressed with more than masculine decision-mark out men at once
enterprising and timid, men equally skilled in detecting the purposes of others,
in and concealing their own, men who must have been formidable enemies
and unsafe allies, but men, at the same time, whose tempers were mild and
equable, and who possessed an amplitude and subtlety of intellect which
would have rendered them eminent either in active or in contemplative life,
and fitted them either to govern or to instruct mankind.

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail
almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which
even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the
fashion of their morals, with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take
some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the
depravity of their ancestors. Nor is this all. Posterity, that high court of appeal
which is never tired of eulogizing its own justice and discernment, acts on such
occasions like a Roman dictator after a general mutiny. Finding the
delinquents too numerous to be all punished, it selects some of them at
hazard, to bear the whole penalty of an offence in which they are not more
deeply implicated than those who escape. Whether decimation be a
convenient mode of military execution, we know not; but we solemnly protest
against the introduction of such a principle into the philosophy of history.

In the present instance, the lot has fallen on Machiavelli, a man whose public
conduct was upright and honorable, whose views of morality, where they
differed from those of the persons around him, seemed to have differed for
the better, and whose only fault was, that, having adopted some of the
maxims then generally received, he arranged them more luminously, and
expressed them more forcibly, than any other writer.

Having now, we hope, in some degree cleared the personal character of
Machiavelli, we come to the consideration of his works. As a poet, he is not
entitled to a very high place; but the comedies deserve more attention.

The "Mandragola," in particular, is superior to the best of Goldoni, and
inferior only to the best of Moliere. It is the work of a man who, if he had
devoted himself to the drama, would probably have attained the highest
eminence, and produced a permanent and salutary effect on the national taste.
This we infer, not so much from the degree as from the kind of its excellence.
There are compositions which indicate still greater talent, and which are
perused with still greater delight, from which we should have drawn very
different conclusions. Books quite worthless are quite harmless. The sure sign
of the general decline of an art is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity,
but of misplaced beauty. In general, tragedy is corrupted by eloquence, and
comedy by wit.

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character. This, we
conceive, is no arbitrary canon, originating in local and temporary
associations, like those canons which regulate the number of acts in a play, or
of syllables in a line. To this fundamental law every other regulation is
subordinate. The situations which most signally develop character form the
best plot. The mother tongue of the passions is the best style.

This principle, rightly understood, does not debar the poet from any grace of
composition. There is no style in which some man may not, under some
circumstances, express himself. There is, therefore, no style which the drama
rejects, none which it does not occasionally require. It is in the discernment of
place, of time, and of person, that the inferior artists fail. The fantastic
rhapsody of Mercutio, the elaborate declamation of Antony, are, where
Shakespeare has placed them, natural and pleasing. But Dryden would have
made Mercutio challenge Tybalt in hyperboles as fanciful as those in which he
describes the chariot of Mab. Corneille would have represented Antony as
scolding and coaxing Cleopatra with all the measured rhetoric of a funeral
oration.

No writers have injured the comedy of England so deeply as Congreve and
Sheridan. Both were men of splendid wit and polished taste. Unhappily, they
made all their characters in their own likeness. Their works bear the same
relation to the legitimate drama which a transparency bears to a painting.
There are no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading into each other:
the whole is lighted up with a universal glare. Outlines and tints are forgotten in
the common blaze which illuminates all. The flowers and fruits of the intellect
abound; but it is the abundance of a jungle, not of a garden, unwholesome,
bewildering, unprofitable from its very plenty, rank from its very fragrance.
Every fop, every boor, every valet, is a man of wit. The very butts and dupes,
Tattle, Witwould, Puff, Acres, outshine the whole Hotel of Rambouillet. To
prove the whole system of this school erroneous, it is only necessary to apply
the test which dissolved the enchanted Florimel, to place the true by the false
Thalia, to contrast the most celebrated characters which have been drawn by
the writers of whom we speak with the Bastard in "King John," or the Nurse
in "Romeo and Juliet." It was not surely from want of wit that Shakespeare
adopted so different a manner. Benedick and Beatrice throw Mirabel and
Millamant into the shade. All the good sayings of the facetious hours of
Absolute and Surface might have been clipped from the single character of
Falstaff without being missed. It would have been easy for that fertile mind to
have given Bardolph and Shallow as much wit as Prince Hal, and to have
made Dogberry and Verges retort on each other in sparkling epigrams. But he
knew that such indiscriminate prodigality was, to use his own admirable
language, "from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now,
was, and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature."

This digression will enable our readers to understand what we mean when we
say, that, in the "Mandragola," Machiavelli has proved that he completely
understood the nature of the dramatic art, and possessed talents which would
have enabled him to excel in it. By the correct and vigorous delineation of
human nature, it produces interest without a pleasing or skillful plot, and
laughter without the least ambition of wit. The lover, not a very delicate or
generous lover, and his adviser the parasite, are drawn with spirit. The
hypocritical confessor is an admirable portrait. He is, if we mistake not, the
original of Father Dominic, the best comic character of Dryden. But old
Nicias is the glory of the piece. We cannot call to mind anything that
resembles him. The follies which Moliere ridicules are those of affectation, not
those of fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants, not absolute simpletons, are his
game. Shakespeare has indeed a vast assortment of fools; but the precise
species of which we speak is not, if we remember right, to be found there.
Shallow is a fool. But his animal spirits supply, to a certain degree, the place
of cleverness. His talk is to that of Sir John what soda-water is to champagne.
It has the effervescence, though not the body or the flavor. Slender and Sir
Andrew Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an un easy consciousness of their
folly, which, in the latter, produces meekness and docility, and in the former,
awkwardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloten is an arrogant fool, Osric a
foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool; but Nicias is, as Thersites says of Patroclus,
a fool positive. His mind is occupied by no strong feeling; it takes every
character, and retains none; its aspect is diversified, not by passions, but by
faint and transitory semblances of passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock
love, a mock pride, which chase each other like shadows over its surface, and
vanish as soon as they appear. He is just idiot enough to be an object, not of
pity or horror, but of ridicule. He bears some resemblance to poor
Calandrino, whose mishaps, as recounted by Boccaccio, have made all
Europe merry for more than four centuries. He perhaps resembles still more
closely Simon de Villa, to whom Bruno and Buffalmacco promised the love of
the Countess Civillari. Nicias is, like Simon, of a learned profession; and the
dignity with which he wears the doctoral fur renders his absurdities infinitely
more grotesque. The old Tuscan is the very language for such a being. Its
peculiar simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most
brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader
sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use
it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more
silly.

The "Clizia" is an imitation of the "Casina" of Plautus, which is itself an
imitation of the lost kxnpoumevol of Diphilus. Plautus was, unquestionably,
one of the best Latin writers; but the "Casina" is by no means one of his best
plays, nor is it one which offers great facilities to an imitator. The story is as
alien from modern habits of life as the manner in which it is developed from
the modern fashion of composition. The lover remains in the country and the
heroine in her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate to be
decided by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knavish servants.
Machiavelli has executed his task with judgment and taste. He has
accommodated the plot to a different state of society, and has very
dexterously connected it with the history of his own times. The relation of the
trick put on the doting old lover is exquisitely humorous. It is far superior to
the corresponding passage in the Latin comedy, and scarcely yields to the
account which Falstaff gives of his ducking.

Two other comedies, without titles, the one in prose, the other in verse,
appear among the works of Machiavelli. The former is very short, lively
enough, but of no great value. The latter we can scarcely believe to be
genuine. Neither its merits nor its defects remind us of the reputed author. It
was first printed in 1796, from a manuscript discovered in the celebrated
library of the Strozzi. Its genuineness, if we have been rightly informed, is
established solely by the comparison of hands. Our suspicions are
strengthened by the circumstance, that the same manuscript contained a
description of the plague of 1527, which has also, in consequence, been
added to the works of Machiavelli. Of this last composition, the strongest
external evidence would scarcely induce us to believe him guilty. Nothing was
ever written more detestable in matter and manner. The narrations, the
reflections, the jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst of their
respective kinds, at once trite and affected, threadbare tinsel from the Rag
Fairs9 and Monmouth streets of literature. A foolish schoolboy might write
such a piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer than the
incomparable introduction of "The Decameron." But that a shrewd statesman,
whose earliest works are characterized by manliness of thought and language,
should, at near sixty years of age, descend to such puerility, is utterly
inconceivable.

The little novel of "Belphegor" is pleasantly conceived, and pleasantly told.
But the extravagance of the satire in some measure injures its effect.
Machiavelli was unhappily married; and his wish to avenge his own cause, and
that of his brethren in misfortune, carried him beyond even the license of
fiction. Jonson seems to have combined some hints taken from this tale, with
others from Boccaccio, in the plot of "The Devil is an Ass," a play which,
though not the most highly finished of his compositions, is perhaps that which
exhibits the strongest proofs of genius.

The political correspondence of Machiavelli, first published in 1767, is
unquestionably genuine, and highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances in
which his country was placed during the greater part of his public life gave
extraordinary encouragement to diplomatic talents. From the moment that
Charles VIII descended from the Alps the whole character of Italian politics
was changed. The governments of the Peninsula ceased to form an
independent system. Drawn from their old orbit by the attraction of the larger
bodies which now approach them, they became mere satellites of France and
Spain. All their disputes, internal and external, were decided by foreign
influence. The contests of opposite factions were carried on, not as formerly
in the Senate house or in the market-place, but in the ante-chambers of Louis
and Ferdinand. Under these circumstances, the prosperity of the Italian States
depended far more on the ability of their foreign agents, than on the conduct
of those who were intrusted with the domestic administration. The
ambassador had to discharge functions far more delicate than transmitting
orders of knighthood, introducing tourists, or presenting his brethren with the
homage of his high consideration. He was an advocate to whose management
the dearest interests of his clients were intrusted, a spy clothed with an
inviolable character. Instead of consulting, by a reserved manner and
ambiguous style, the dignity of those whom he represented, he was to plunge
into all the intrigues of the court at which he resided, to discover and flatter
every weakness of the prince, and of the favorite who governed the prince,
and of the lackey who governed the favorite. He was to compliment the
mistress, and bribe the confessor, to panegyrize or supplicate, to laugh or
weep, to accommodate himself to every caprice, to lull every suspicion, to
treasure every hint, to be everything, to observe everything, to endure
everything. High as the art of political intrigue had been carried in Italy, these
were times which required it all.

On these arduous errands Machiavelli was frequently employed. He was sent
to treat with the King of the Romans and with the Duke of Valentinois. He
was twice ambassador at the Court of Rome, and thrice at that of France. In
these missions, and in several others of inferior importance, he acquitted
himself with great dexterity. His despatches form one of the most amusing and
instructive collections extant. The narratives are clear and agreeably written,
the remarks on men and things clever and judicious. The conversations are
reported in a spirited and characteristic manner. We find ourselves introduced
into the presence of the men who, during twenty eventful years, swayed the
destinies of Europe. Their wit and their folly, their fretfulness and their
merriment, are exposed to us. We are admitted to overhear their chat, and to
watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and curious to recognize, in
circumstances which elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and
shallow cunning of Louis XII; the bustling insignificance of Maximilian, cursed
with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle,
always in a hurry, yet always too late; the fierce and haughty energy which
gave dignity to the eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which
masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable hatred of Caesar Borgia.

We have mentioned Caesar Borgia. It is impossible not to pause for a
moment on the name of a man in whom the political morality of Italy was so
strongly personified, partially blended with the sterner lineaments of the
Spanish character. On two important occasions Machiavelli was admitted to
his society - once, at the moment when Caesar's splendid villainy achieved its
most signal triumph, when he caught in one snare, and crushed at one blow,
all his most formidable rivals; and again when, exhausted by disease, and
overwhelmed by misfortunes which no human prudence could have averted,
he was the prisoner of the deadliest enemy of his house. These interviews
between the greatest speculative and the greatest practical statesmen of the
age are fully described in the "Correspondence," and form, perhaps, the most
interesting part of it. From some passages in "The Prince," and perhaps also
from some indistinct traditions, several writers have supposed a connection
between those remarkable men much closer than ever existed. The envoy has
even been accused of prompting the crimes of the artful and merciless tyrant.
But, from the official documents, it is clear that their intercourse, though
ostensibly amicable, was in reality hostile. It cannot be doubted, however, that
the imagination of Machiavelli was strongly impressed, and his speculations on
government colored, by the observations which he made on the singular
character and equally singular fortunes of a man who, under such
disadvantages, had achieved such exploits; who, when sensuality, varied
through innumerable forms, could no longer stimulate his sated mind, found a
more powerful and durable excitement in the intense thirst of empire and
revenge; who emerged from the sloth and luxury of the Roman purple the first
prince and general of the age; who, trained in an unwarlike profession, formed
a gallant army out of the dregs of an unwarlike people; who, after acquiring
sovereignty by destroying his enemies, acquired popularity by destroying his
tools; who had begun to employ for the most salutary ends the power which
he had attained by the most atrocious means; who tolerated within the sphere
of his iron despotism no plunderer or oppressor but himself; and who fell at
last amidst the mingled curses and regrets of a people of whom his genius had
been the wonder, and might have been the salvation. Some of those crimes of
Borgia which to us appear the most odious, would not, from causes which we
have already considered, have struck an Italian of the fifteenth century with
equal horror. Patriotic feeling also might induce Machiavelli to look with some
indulgence and regret on the memory of the only leader who could have
defended the independence of Italy against the confederate spoilers of
Cambray.

Part III

On this subject, Machiavelli felt most strongly. Indeed, the expulsion of the
foreign tyrants, and the restoration of that golden age which had preceded the
irruption of Charles VIII, were projects which, at that time, fascinated all the
master-spirits of Italy. The magnificent vision delighted the great but
ill-regulated mind of Julius. It divided with manuscripts and saucers, painters
and falcons, the attention of the frivolous Leo. It prompted the generous
treason of Morone. It imparted a transient energy to the feeble mind and body
of the last Sforza. It excited for one moment an honest ambition in the false
heart of Pescara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the vices of the
national character. To the discriminating cruelties of politicians, committed for
great ends on select victims, the moral code of the Italians was too indulgent.
But, though they might have recourse to barbarity as an expedient, they did
not require it as a stimulant. They turned with loathing from the atrocity of the
strangers who seemed to love blood for its own sake; who, not content with
subjugating, were impatient to destroy; who found a fiendish pleasure in razing
magnificent cities, cutting the throats of enemies who cried for quarter, or
suffocating an unarmed population by thousands in the caverns to which it had
fled for safety. Such were the cruelties which daily excited the terror and
disgust of a people among whom, till lately, the worst that a soldier had to fear
in a pitched battle was the loss of his horse and the expense of his ransom.
The swinish intemperance of Switzerland; the wolfish avarice of Spain; the
gross licentiousness of the French, indulged in violation of hospitality, of
decency, of love itself; the wanton inhumanity which was common to all the
invaders - had made them objects of deadly hatred to the inhabitants of the
Peninsula. The wealth which had been accumulated during centuries of
prosperity and repose was rapidly melting away. The intellectual superiority of
the oppressed people only rendered them more keenly sensible of their
political degradation. Literature and taste, indeed, still disguised with a flush of
hectic loveliness and brilliancy the ravages of an incurable decay. The iron had
not yet entered into the soul. The time was not yet come when eloquence was
to be gagged, and reason to be hoodwinked, when the harp of the poet was
to be hung on the willows of Arno, and the right hand of the painter to forget
its cunning. Yet a discerning eye might even then have seen that genius and
learning would not long survive the state of things from which they had sprung,
and that the great men whose talents gave lustre to that melancholy period had
been formed under the influence of happier days, and would leave no
successors behind them. The times which shine with the greatest splendor in
literary history are not always those to which the human mind is most
indebted. Of this we may be convinced, by comparing the generation which
follows them with that which had preceded them. The first fruits which are
reaped under a bad system often spring from seed sown under a good one.
Thus it was, in some measure, with the Augustan age. Thus it was with the age
of Raphael and Ariosto, of Aldus and Vida.

Machiavelli deeply regretted the misfortunes of his country, and clearly
discerned the cause and the remedy. It was the military system of the Italian
people which had extinguished their valor and discipline, and left their wealth
an easy prey to every foreign plunderer. The secretary projected a scheme,
alike honorable to his heart and to his intellect, for abolishing the use of
mercenary troops, and for organizing a national militia.

The exertions which he made to effect this great object ought alone to rescue
his name from obloquy. Though his situation and his habits were pacific, he
studied with intense assiduity the theory of war. He made himself master of all
its details. The Florentine government entered into his views. A council of war
was appointed. Levies were decreed. The indefatigable minister flew from
place to place in order to superintend the execution of his design. The times
were, in some respects, favorable to the experiment. The system of military
tactics had undergone a great revolution. The cavalry was no longer
considered as forming the strength of an army. The hours which a citizen
could spare from his ordinary employments, though by no means sufficient to
familiarize him with the exercise of a man-at-arms, might render him a useful
foot-soldier. The dread of a foreign yoke, of plunder, massacre, and
conflagration, might have conquered that repugnance to military pursuits which
both the industry and the idleness of great towns commonly generate. For a
time the scheme promised well. The new troops acquitted themselves
respectably in the field. Machiavelli looked with parental rapture on the
success of his plan, and began to hope that the arms of Italy might once more
be formidable to the barbarians of the Tagus and the Rhine. But the tide of
misfortune came on before the barriers which should have withstood it were
prepared. For a time, indeed, Florence might be considered as peculiarly
fortunate. Famine and sword and pestilence had devastated the fertile plains
and stately cities of the Po. All the curses denounced of old against Tyre
seemed to have fallen on Venice. Her merchants already stood afar off,
lamenting for their great city. The time seemed near when the sea-weed
should overgrow her silent Rialto, and the fisherman wash his nets in her
deserted arsenal. Naples had been four times conquered and reconquered by
tyrants equally indifferent to its welfare, and equally greedy for its spoils.
Florence, as yet, had only to endure degradation and extortion, to submit to
the mandates of foreign powers, to buy over and over again, at an enormous
price, what was already justly her own, to return thanks for being wronged,
and to ask pardon for being in the right. She was at length deprived of the
blessings, even of this infamous and servile repose. Her military and political
institutions were swept away together. The Medici returned, in the train of
foreign invaders, from their long exile. The policy of Machiavelli was
abandoned; and his public services were requited with poverty, imprisonment,
and torture.

The fallen statesman still clung to his project with unabated ardor. With the
view of vindicating it from some popular objections, and of refuting some
prevailing errors on the subject of military science, he wrote his "Seven Books
on the Art of War." This excellent work is in the form of a dialogue. The
opinions of the writer are put into the mouth of Fabrizio Colonna, a powerful
nobleman of the ecclesiastical State, and an officer of distinguished merit in the
service of the King of Spain. Colonna visits Florence on his way from
Lombardy to his own domains. He is invited to meet some friends at the
house of Cosimo Rucellai, an amiable and accomplished young man, whose
early death Machiavelli feelingly deplores. After partaking of an elegant
entertainment, they retire from the heat into the most shady recesses of the
garden. Fabrizio is struck by the sight of some uncommon plants. Cosimo
says, that, though rare in modern days, they are frequently mentioned by the
classical authors, and that his grandfather, like many other Italians, amused
himself with practising the ancient methods of gardening. Fabrizio expresses
his regret that those who, in later times, affected the manners of the old
Romans, should select for imitation the most trifling pursuits. This leads to a
conversation on the decline of military discipline, and on the best means of
restoring it. The institution of the Florentine militia is ably defended, and
several improvements are suggested in the details.

The Swiss and the Spaniards were, at that time, regarded as the best soldiers
in Europe. The Swiss battalion consisted of pikemen, and bore a close
resemblance to the Greek phalanx. The Spaniards, like the soldiers of Rome,
were armed with the sword and the shield. The victories of Flaminius and
Aemilius over the Macedonian kings seem to prove the superiority of the
weapons used by the legions. The same experiment had been recently tried
with the same result at the battle of Ravenna, one of those tremendous days
into which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a
famine or a plague. In that memorable conflict, the infantry of Aragon, the old
companions of Gonsalvo, deserted by all their allies, hewed a passage through
the thickest of the imperial pikes, and effected an unbroken retreat, in the face
of the gendarmerie of De Foix, and the renowned artillery of Este. Fabrizio,
or rather Machiavelli, proposes to combine the two systems, to arm the
foremost lines with the pike for the purpose of repulsing cavalry, and those in
the rear with the sword, as being a weapon better adapted for every other
purpose. Throughout the work, the author expresses the highest admiration of
the military science of the ancient Romans, and the greatest contempt for the
maxims which had been in vogue amongst the Italian commanders of the
preceding generation. He prefers infantry to cavalry, and fortified camps to
fortified towns. He is inclined to substitute rapid movements and decisive
engagements for the languid and dilatory operations of his countrymen. He
attaches very little importance to the invention of gunpowder. Indeed, he
seems to think that it ought scarcely to produce any change in the mode of
arming or of disposing troops. The general testimony of historians, it must be
allowed, seems to prove that the ill-constructed and ill-served artillery of
those times, though useful in a siege, was of little value on the field of battle.

On the tactics of Machiavelli we will not venture to give an opinion, but we
are certain that his book is most able and interesting. As a commentary on the
history of his times, it is invaluable. The ingenuity, the grace, and the
perspicuity of the style, and the eloquence and animation of particular
passages, must give pleasure, even to readers who take no interest in the
subject.

"The Prince" and the "Discourses on Livy" were written after the fall of the
republican government. The former was dedicated to the young Lorenzo de'
Medici. This circumstance seems to have disgusted the contemporaries of the
writer far more that the doctrines which have rendered the name of the work
odious in latter times. It was considered as an indication of political apostasy.
The fact, however, seems to have been, that Machiavelli, despairing of the
liberty of Florence, was inclined to support any government which might
preserve her independence. The interval which separated a democracy and a
despotism Soderini and Lorenzo, seemed to vanish when compared with the
difference between the former and the present state of Italy, between the
security, the opulence, and the repose which she had enjoyed under its native
rulers, and the misery in which she had been plunged since the fatal year in
which the first foreign tyrant had descended from the Alps. The noble and
pathetic exhortation with which "The Prince" concludes shows how strongly
the writer felt upon this subject.

"The Prince" traces the progress of an ambitious man, the "Discourses" the
progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the former
work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied, in the latter, to
the longer duration and more complex interest of a society. To a modern
statesman the form of the "Discourses" may appear to be puerile. In truth,
Livy is not a historian on whom implicit reliance can be placed, even in cases
where he must have possessed considerable means of information. And the
first Decade, to which Machiavelli has confined himself, is scarcely entitled to
more credit than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before the
Roman invasion. But the commentator is indebted to Livy for little more than a
few texts which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or "The
Decameron." The whole train of thought is original.

On the peculiar immorality which has rendered "The Prince" unpopular, and
which is almost equally discernible in the "Discourses" we have already given
our opinion at length. We have attempted to show that it belonged rather to
the age than to the man, that it was a partial taint, and by no means implied
general depravity. We cannot, however, deny that it is a great blemish, and
that it considerably diminishes the pleasure which, in other respects, those
works must afford to every intelligent mind.

It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a more healthful and vigorous constitution
of the understanding than that which these works indicate. The qualities of the
active and the contemplative statesman appear to have been blended in the
mind of the writer into a rare and exquisite harmony. His skill in the details of
business had not been acquired at the expense of his general powers. It had
not rendered his mind less comprehensive; but it had served to correct his
speculations, and to impart to them that vivid and practical character which so
widely distinguishes them from the vague theories of most political
philosophers.

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a
general maxim. If it be very moral and very true, it may serve for a copy to a
charity boy. If, like those of Rochefoucauld, it be sparkling and whimsical, it
may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few indeed of the many wise
apophthegms which have been uttered, from the time of the Seven Sages of
Greece to that of "Poor Richard," have prevented a single foolish action. We
give the highest and the most peculiar praise to the precepts of Machiavelli
when we say that they may frequently be of real use in regulating conduct, not
so much because they are more just or more profound than those which might
be culled from other authors, as because they can be more readily applied to
the problems of real life.

There are errors in these works. But they are errors which a writer, situated
like Machiavelli, could scarcely avoid. They arise, for the most part, from a
single defect which appears to us to pervade his whole system. In his political
scheme, the means had been more deeply considered than the ends. The
great principle, that societies and laws exist only for the purpose of increasing
the sum of private happiness, is not recognized with sufficient clearness. The
good of the body, distinct from the good of the members, and sometimes
hardly compatible with the good of the members, seems to be the object
which he proposes to himself. Of all political fallacies, this has perhaps had the
widest and the most mischievous operation. The state of society in the little
commonwealths of Greece, the close connection and mutual dependence of
the citizens, and the severity of the laws of war, tended to encourage an
opinion which, under such circumstances, could hardly be called erroneous.
The interests of every individual were inseparably bound up with those of the
State. An invasion destroyed his corn-fields and vineyards, drove him from his
home, and compelled him to encounter all the hardships of a military life. A
treaty of peace restored him to security and comfort. A victory doubled the
number of his slaves. A defeat perhaps made him a slave himself. When
Pericles, in the Peloponnesian war, told the Athenians, that, if their country
triumphed, their private losses would speedily be repaired, but that, if their
arms failed of success, every individual amongst them would probably be
ruined, he spoke no more than the truth. He spoke to men whom the tribute
of vanquished cities supplied with food and clothing, with the luxury of the
bath and the amusements of the theatre, on whom the greatness of their
country conferred rank, and before whom the members of less prosperous
communities trembled; to men who, in case of a change in the public fortunes,
would, at least, be deprived of every comfort and every distinction which they
enjoyed. To be butchered on the smoking ruins of their city, to be dragged in
chains to a slave-market, to see one child torn from them to dig in the quarries
of Sicily, and another to guard the harems of Persepolis, these were the
frequent and probable consequences of national calamities. Hence, among the
Greeks, patriotism became a governing principle, or rather an ungovernable
passion. Their legislators and their philosophers took it for granted, that, in
providing for the strength and greatness of the State, they sufficiently provided
for the happiness of the people. The writers of the Roman Empire lived under
despots, into whose dominion a hundred nations were melted down, and
whose gardens would have covered the little commonwealths of Phlius and
Plataea. Yet they continued to employ the same language, and to cant about
the duty of sacrificing everything to a country to which they owed nothing.

Causes similar to those which had influenced the disposition of the Greeks
operated powerfully on the less vigorous and daring character of the Italians.
The Italians, like the Greeks, were members of small communities. Every man
was deeply interested in the welfare of the society to which he belonged, a
partaker in its wealth and its poverty, in its glory and its shame. In the age of
Machiavelli this was peculiarly the case. Public events had produced an
immense sum of misery to private citizens. The Northern invaders had brought
want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their roofs, and the knife to
their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should
overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is rendered
formidable to its neighbors, and undervalue those which make it prosperous
within itself.

Nothing is more remarkable in the political treatises of Machiavelli than the
fairness of mind which they indicate. It appears where the author is in the
wrong, almost as strongly as where he is in the right. He never advances a
false opinion because it is new or splendid, because he can clothe it in a
happy phrase, or defend it by an ingenious sophism. His errors are at once
explained by a reference to the circumstances in which he was placed. They
evidently were not sought out: they lay in his way, and could scarcely be
avoided. Such mistakes must necessarily be committed by early speculators in
every science.

The political works of Machiavelli derive a peculiar interest from the mournful
earnestness which he manifests whenever he touches on topics connected
with the calamities of his native land. It is difficult to conceive any situation
more painful that of a great man, condemned to watch the lingering agony of
an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and
raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality
disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and
corruption. To this joyless and thankless duty was Machiavelli called. In the
energetic language of the prophet, he was "mad for the sight of his eyes which
he saw" - disunion in the Council, effeminacy in the camp, liberty extinguished,
commerce decaying, national honor sullied, an enlightened and flourishing
people given over to the ferocity of ignorant savages. Though his opinions had
not escaped the contagion of that political immorality which was common
among his countrymen, his natural disposition seems to have been rather stern
and impetuous than pliant and artful. When the misery and degradation of
Florence, and the foul outrage which he had himself sustained, recur to his
mind, the smooth craft of his profession and his nation is exchanged for the
honest bitterness of scorn and anger. He speaks like one sick of the
calamitous times and abject people among whom his lot is cast. He pines for
the strength and glory of ancient Rome, for the fasces of Brutus and the sword
of Scipio, the gravity of the curule chair, and the bloody pomp of the
triumphal sacrifice. He seems to be transported back to the days when
eight hundred thousand Italian warriors sprung to arms at the rumor of a Gallic invasion. He
breathes all the spirit of those intrepid and haughty Senators who forgot the
dearest ties of nature in the claims of public duty, who looked with disdain on
the elephants and on the gold of Pyrrhus, and listened with unaltered
composure to the tremendous tidings of Cannae. Like an ancient temple
deformed by the barbarous architecture of a later age, his character acquires
an interest from the very circumstances which debase it. The original
proportions are rendered more striking by the contrast which they present to
the mean and incongruous additions.

The influence of the sentiments which we have described was not apparent in
his writings alone. His enthusiasm, barred from the career which it would have
selected for itself, seems to have found a vent in desperate levity. He enjoyed
a vindictive pleasure in outraging the opinions of a society which he despised.
He became careless of the decencies which were expected from a man so
highly distinguished in the literary and political world. The sarcastic bitterness
of his conversation disgusted those who were more inclined to accuse his
licentiousness than their own degeneracy, and who were unable to conceive
the strength of those emotions which are concealed by the jests of the
wretched, and by the follies of the wise.

The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to be considered. The life of
Castruccio Castracani will occupy us for a very short time, and would
scarcely have demanded our notice had it not attracted a much greater share
of public attention than it deserves. Few books, indeed, could be more
interesting than a careful and judicious account, from such a pen, of the
illustrious Prince of Lucca, the most eminent of those Italian chiefs, who, like
Pisistratus and Gelon, acquired a power felt rather than seen, and resting, not
on law or on prescription, but on the public favor and on their great personal
qualities. Such a work would exhibit to us the real nature of that species of
sovereignty, so singular and so often misunderstood, which the Greeks
denominated tyranny, and which, modified in some degree by the feudal
system, reappeared in the commonwealths of Lombardy and Tuscany. But
this little composition of Machiavelli is in no sense a history. It has no
pretensions to fidelity. It is trifle, and not a very successful trifle. It is scarcely
more authentic than the novel of "Belphegor," and is very much duller.

The last great work of this illustrious man was the history of his native city. It
was written by command of the Pope, who, as chief of the house of Medici,
was at that time sovereign of Florence. The characters of Cosimo, of Piero,
and of Lorenzo, are, however, treated with a freedom and impartiality equally
honorable to the writer and to the patron. The miseries and humiliations of
dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other food, the stairs
which are more painful than every other ascent, has not broken the spirit of
Machiavelli. The most corrupting post in a corrupting profession had not
depraved the generous heart of Clement.

The history does not appear to be the fruit of much industry or research. It is
unquestionably inaccurate. But it is elegant, lively, and picturesque, beyond
any other in the Italian language. The reader, we believe, carries away from it
a more vivid and a more faithful impression of the national character and
manners than from more correct accounts. The truth is, that the book belongs
rather to ancient than to modern literature. It is in the style, not of Davila and
Clarendon, but of Herodotus and Tacitus. The classical histories may almost
be called romances founded in fact. The relation is, no doubt, in all its
principal points, strictly true. But the numerous little incidents which heighten
the interest, the words, the gestures, the looks, are evidently furnished by the
imagination of the author. The fashion of later times is different. A more exact
narrative is given by the writer.

It may be doubted whether more exact notions are conveyed to the reader.
The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of
caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which
a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed.
Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are
neglected, but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind
forever.

The history terminates with the death of Lorenzo de' Medici. Machiavelli had,
it seems, intended to continue his narrative to a later period. But his death
prevented the execution of his design, and the melancholy task of recording
the desolation and shame of Italy devolved on Guicciardini.

1 Originally published during March, 1827, as a review of a translation of the complete works of Machiavelli by J. V. Peries (Paris: 1825).

2 Trs.: "Enjoying the utmost peace and tranquillity,
cultivated as well in the most mountainous and barren places as
in the plains and most fertile regions, and not subject to any
other dominion than that of its own people, it not only
overflowed with inhabitants and with riches, but was highly
adorned by the magnificence of many princes, by the splendor of
many renowned and beautiful cities, by the abode and majesty
of religion, and abounded in men who excelled in the
administration of public affairs and in minds most eminent in all
the sciences and in every noble and useful art." - Guicciardini,
"History of Italy," Book I., trans. Montague.

3 Trs.: "The ladies and the knights, the toils and sports to
which love and courtesy stirred our desire there where all hearts
have grown so evil."

4 Nothing can be more evident than that Paulus
Jovius designates the "Mandragola" under the name of the
"Nicias." We should not have noticed what is so perfectly
obvious, were it not that this natural and palpable misnomer has
led the sagacious and industrious Bayle into a gross error. [Macaulay's original note.]